All Relationships End

I stumbled into the appointment with my doctor this morning for a follow-up to my annual checkup. Sleep deprived from several nights of self-inflicted heartache and grief, I listened in a fog as she told me all my lab results were perfect. How could that be? I wondered.

“You get an A plus plus,” she said as I struggled to figure out what to ask in that precious limited doctor patient time. “But, my weight. I think I’m about ten pounds more than I should be… what was the thyroid number again?”

“Your weight is just fine for your age,” she said. How dare she? This is personal now. I must respond in a personal way.

“But look at you, look at how thin you are and how great you look… (I was tempted but didn’t add “and you’re like 10 years older than me!”)

“Oh that,” she said, “yeah, I just lost 20 pounds.” My mind reeled. She better tell me what fucking diet she was on!

“It’s because of the x,” she said as she held her left hand up.

I immediately tried to remember any mention of a diet product called x. Nothing came to me.

“x?” I asked, trying to achieve that tone that conveys, “I think I’ve heard of it, please don’t think I’m stupid for not remembering right away, I don’t really sleep much anymore.”

She looked embarrassed and I couldn’t understand why. “The ex, or soon-to-be-ex, I should say,” she said as she held up the left hand again with the wedding ring still sitting on the correct finger.

I wanted to disappear. I did my best to comfort my doctor, a very well regarded doctor from a very well regarded medical school who is dealing with the end of a relationship.

I went straight from my doctor’s appointment to get my eyebrows waxed. Lest you think this was a day of endless self care and leisure, I brought papers to grade during every free moment.

So lately I’ve been nervous about my eyebrow appointments. You see, about 3 or 4 appointments ago, the woman who has diligently battled what would be my natural Frida Kahlo-like look for at least a decade shared some shocking news with me. Not only had she discovered that her husband was cheating on her, but he now was kicking her out of the house and didn’t plan to give her a penny to start a new life. I must admit that the day she told me this I fought back tears as she revealed all the details, cried as I drove away, and felt like shit for a long time after. She is the nicest person.

But today, she graced me with good news. She feels so much better. They are talking and working out the financial issues. He is repentant. He might even want her back. She is done but she appreciates that he’s starting to take responsibility for how bad he fucked everything up. She looked great too. There was an “I will survive” air about her now. So different from a few weeks ago. Whew. I needed to see that today more than ever. I was holding my breath when I went into the little spa room and suddenly I was sucking in the gulps of air that I hadn’t allowed myself to enjoy for days.

I can tell her. She’ll understand. The voice spoke clearly to me but I fought it at first. How can I tell her this after all she’s been through? She’ll think I’m crazy. But almost a year ago, when I first shared with her that my then sixteen-year-old son was head over heels in love for the first time, she listened intently and seemed to know that we were all in for a crazy ride.

I was ridiculously excited and naive. “They’re so sweet and cute together. We love her. It’s wonderful. I’m so proud of my son for being such a nurturing boyfriend.”

She made the appropriate small talk about it, but I could feel her apprehension. She knew what I didn’t know. And so today, I knew that I had to tell her.

I tried to be nonchalant at first… “Oh, and guess what? My son and his girlfriend broke up.”

She stepped back from the table, wax strip in hand, waiting for me to say more.

“It’s… well, it’s been really hard for him, he’s just so sad and so is she. I’m worried about her too. I’ve been checking in with her mom about how she’s doing.”

She just waited again and my eyebrows were now the last thing on my mind.

I felt the tears well up again. How mortifying. I might lose it here in this tiny room in the back of the salon next to Vons.

Her facial expression said it all. Her words helped more.

“It’s worse for you when it’s your child than when it’s you. To see them in so much pain is the hardest thing.”

I just nodded, wanting her to say more. Thankfully she did. “My daughter was with her boyfriend for five years and I cried the entire night they broke up. I couldn’t stand that I had no way to lessen her pain.”

So then I knew I could let it out.

“He’s so upset. He was the one to do it, but he’s heartbroken. He feels like a terrible person because he hurt her. He loves her, but it wasn’t working. They were both too attached to each other. They were inseparable, together practically every moment of every day and then suddenly it all had to end. It’s just… oh my God.” The pain in my heart surfaced again. The memories of listening outside his room, just a few nights ago, as they both cried and she tried to understand why this young man who had swooped into her life to be her knight in shining armor would no longer be there for her.

Not that it’s about me, but all this forces me to relive excruciating situations in which I was her – in my younger years. I was left, rejected by men who I gave my heart to, who suddenly didn’t have anything more to give me, just days after giving me everything… physically, emotionally, and sexually.

But now my allegiance is to my son. I have to confess I feel allegiance to her too though. It’s just so complicated. I feel her pain more as a woman who has been abandoned. I feel his pain more as the child I grew in my womb and nursed on my breast.

Why must I feel these things so deeply? WHY????? Other parents see their kids go through breakups. Do they feel this much pain? I suspect some do and some don’t. I’m so grateful that my faithful friend who waxes my unruly eyebrows seemed to fully understand. And she had the grace to comfort me… even in the midst of being deserted by her own husband, she comforted me as I grieved the end of my son’s innocence, his introduction to the heartbreak of love and loss, because opening your heart to true romantic love always eventually involves loss, deep soul crushing loss. And as any parent knows, we would gladly bear any pain we could prevent our children from feeling. But it doesn’t work that way.

All relationships end. Roughly half of marriages end in divorce. Teenage romance leads to volatile breakups and new teenage romances that end in more volatile breakups. College loves crash and burn. Office romance rarely lasts. Even the rare lifelong commitment, the fifty year anniversary that we all praise and cherish, ends because one year later an inoperable tumor is discovered on his lung, and she must go on for another twelve years without him. How does she do it?

Sorry, there is no happy ending to this. I am sad. I am disillusioned. I wish I could hug my son’s ex-girlfriend and tell her I can relate to her more than she’ll ever know and that I’m sorry I didn’t make her dinner and ask her about her life more often when she was here. But she will not be coming over anymore. I am holding on tight to my husband, asking him every day, “Do you still love me? Are you going to leave me?” I ask in a joking, lighthearted manner, but still I want to hear his answer. His promises are sincere, but they are promises that are not really his to make, at least not forever. Feelings change. Circumstances change. People change. New opportunities present themselves. Fate can be cruel. In the end, even if true love passes the test of time, one partner leaves the other by dying. Enjoy what you have today. Whatever it may be. None of it is guaranteed tomorrow.